Better Things
by Aurelia Priscus
Summary: A 'Family Guy' and 'The Manchurian Candidate' (2004) crossover. Stewie's inventions have had some unusual repercussions in the past, but this is...interesting, to say the least. Peter finds a new vocation and Brian makes a new friend.
1. Chapter One

**Better Things: A _Family Guy_ & _The Manchurian Candidate (2004)_ Crossover**

1.

The weather was sunny and bright and—so far—the day had passed without incident. Through more luck than conscious effort, Lois Griffin had escaped her afternoon shopping with Stewie unscathed. The morning rain of live halibut remained unexplained, but this was Quahog and stranger things had happened. Come to think of it, they were often her husband Peter's fault.

Lois secured her little bundle of joy into his highchair before returning to the car for the groceries. She appreciated the chance to get out of the house once and a while, whether or not heavenly intervention had rendered shopping for dinner unnecessary, and was more than willing to accommodate her little man when he demanded a video rental or two for that evening's entertainment. He had dictated her selections, but she didn't give this unexpected interested in vintage cinema any thought. She knew how much he loved his _Teletubbies_.

"Ooh, _gaga_," Stewie exclaimed, eyes sparkling with the malicious glee of youth. "Baby wants the video cassette!" He bounced up and down in his highchair as he cried, waving his pudgy little arms with considerable enthusiasm. He was forced to stop a few minutes later (out of breath, alas) but it was a performance worthy of Oscar consideration. Suck on _that_, Laurence Olivier!

Lois noticed a video cassette lying on the table and, glancing at the title, set it further out of his reach. "Now Stewie," she said in her usual light but condescending tone, "this movie is for mommies and daddies! You can watch your video in a minute."

"Foul woman!" Stewie cried in frustration, "I want a taut political thriller, not porn! Now give me that tape or prepare to feel the back of my hand! I mean ... Wah! Wah! Give baby the tape _now_!"

Who could refuse that face? She handed him the box with a reluctant sigh. "Brian, watch Stewie for me. I need to finish unloading the car."

Brian looked up from his newspaper long enough to nod.

She disappeared in the direction of the car.

With a self-congratulating cackle, Stewie slipped out of his highchair and parachuted to the ground. Hidden in the corner under an inconspicuous blue baby blanket was a strange and awesome machine that bore a suspicious resemblance to a malfunctioning toaster. Brian's eyes followed a number of its color-coded wires across the floor to four metal dishes that had been installed in the doorframe of the basement door. They looked vaguely sinister. "I had wondered about those," he said, returning to the paper. "What is that thing for, anyway?"

"Not that it's any business of yours, _dog_," Stewie replied, "but I am in the process of acquiring a new—-_friend_." There was something untrustworthy in his expression. Brian had come to expect that in a one-year-old who had rejected Machiavelli's _The Prince_ because it hadn't told him anything he didn't already know.

"_The Manchurian Candidate_," Brian read thoughtfully. "This wouldn't have anything to do with that, uh, Raymond Shaw character, would it?"

"We have a lot in common," Stewie sniffed as he removed the cassette from its box and inserted it into the machine. Pressing a few buttons, the contraption began to angrily hiss and click. "Who better to appreciate my situation than one that has also languished under the vile tyranny of a corrupt and merciless matriarch? ... And that dishy English accent! Yum."

Brian let his attention drift back to his newspaper. Somehow reading about Mayor Adam West's one-man campaign against his evil twin was becoming more and more appealing. "Have I commented on how gay you are today? Oh yeah, I have."

_Stewie is playing in the middle of the carpet with a toy train. "Choo! Choo!" he says to himself, "ha, the little train that could—-BE CONSUMED IN A FIERY INFERNO! Haha!" As if on cue, the little train careens off its track and plummets to its doom. It explodes in a ball of flame, scorching a hole in the carpet. _

_Wandering through, Brian pauses at the sight of the baby. "God, you are so gay."_

"That the man is a brainwashed assassin and would have no choice but to do your evil bidding has nothing to do with it, of course." Brian leaned back into his chair with a sigh. "If you're going to go to all the trouble of bringing a fictional character to life, why can't it be, oh, I don't know... John McClane or Michael Corleone? Somebody at least mildly interesting?"

Stewie looked awkward. "But I thought Senator John McCain was real. Unless, of course... Yes, that must be it! _The networks have been lying to me all along!_ When the revolution comes, Fox News will be first against the wall!"

"No, no," Brian corrected. "I mean uh, you know... Bruce Willis in the _Die Hard_ movies, but I can see where you might have been confused."

"Oh, right," Stewie reluctantly conceded. "I always liked the second one. You know, the one with the plane..."

Brian shook his head and gave a short, humorless laugh. "Ha, I always knew you were crazy, Stewie, but that, that really takes the cake. Alan Rickman _alone_ made that first movie, and don't get me started on the _plot_..."

"Agree to disagree, then?"

"I guess."

"Good. I'm just going to, uh, finish this, then."

"Go ahead."

The basement door began to glow an unnerving shade of orange. Stewie carefully adjusted his instruments and, with a final flick of the switch, the tape began to play. Energy pulsed into the machine. The lights flickered dangerously before finally failing in a shower of sparks. With a heavy sigh, Brian reached for his sunglasses and slipped them on. As he'd learned to expect from Stewie's many inventions, the subsequent flash was blinding.

---------------------------

Author's Notes: As one might imagine, I don't exactly own any of the characters featured in this or any of the chapters of this story and no harm is intended by their use here. Although it isn't necessary, an understanding of the original film and the plethora of other random references scattered throughout this story would be useful. What else do people put in these notes, anyway? Other than, "I'll finish this, I'll promise." but that rather implies I expect somebody to _read _this. I have these doubts.

Oh, and for any fans of _The Manchurian Candidate _on LiveJournal are encouraged to check out the tiny, unimportant 'mcandidate' community... because I'm so alone.


	2. Chapter Two

2.

"_Who the deuce are you?!"_

Good question. Who are you, Raymond Shaw? Other than a hollow shell of a human being, I mean? He looked around before finally locating the source of the voice—a baby seated on the discolored linoleum floor, watching him. Raymond stared as the strange little creature, grappling with a VHS cassette box, skimmed what was presumably the film's summary on the back. The words _The Manchurian Candidate_ were clearly visible on the spine.

He hadn't heard of it.

The baby's abnormally large eyes widened in horror, the implications of whatever he was reading apparently beginning to sink in. Could a child that young even read? "What's this? Released in _2004?!_ Damn you, woman!" he screamed, slamming his tiny fists into the floor. "This is the wrong film! I wanted a killing machine, not some pouf politician!"

Raymond Prentiss Shaw was having what he would reluctantly describe as a bad day. Admittedly, if he were to be entirely honest with himself (and he generally wasn't), he would probably come to the conclusion that he'd had nothing but bad days for two months straight—the unfortunate but inevitable result of campaigning to be Vice President of the United States. This required him to, among other things, speak voluntarily to other people and wave enthusiastically at crowds of screaming onlookers—both activities that for whatever reason he despised. Admittedly, today had been a bit worse than the usual three-ring circus that had become his daily existence. For example, an old army comrade had that afternoon, in a fit of extreme paranoia, bitten a hole in his left shoulder. That a baby no more than one year of age was now insulting his manhood was not doing much to assist his emotional wellbeing. He hated children as a general rule, if not only because they eventually became adults.

Not much about Raymond's life made sense these days (most especially not to him), so it was with only moderate surprise that he picked up the squirming youngster and pressed a kiss onto his forehead. Smile bright, he pinched the child's cheek and said something suitably nauseating about the innocence of youth. If what Marco had said was true about those implants, Raymond thought grimly, it would seem being mean to small children was a character flaw "They" had thought it necessary to fix.

The child seemed unimpressed. "What are you, stupid, man? Release me at once!" He kicked and thrashed but, after a couple of half-hearted attempts to play with the youngster, Raymond set him back down on the floor with a quick pat on the head.

There was something very wrong with this situation. This was not his campaign headquarters, for instance. In the back of his mind, a little voice shrilly protested that young babies ought not to be able to speak at all, much less use "pouf" correctly in a sentence. It didn't help that there was something in the child's calculating expression that reminded him distressingly of his mother.

The baby's eyes narrowed in contemplation. "I see!" he said, the child's voice cut with enthusiasm. "You're still _brainwashed_, aren't you? Perhaps I will have use for you yet, Raymond Shaw. _Why don't you pass the time by playing a little solitaire_?"

"How do you know my name?" were the first words to escape his lips, although it soon occurred to him that in the current political climate there were few human beings more recognizable than he was. His mother had seen to that. "Where am I? Did Marco put you up to this?"

"Your location at this juncture is unimportant. What is important is that you take this pack of playing cards and play some solitaire right now! I have things for you to do and time is of the essence!" His sharp English accent put Raymond in the mind of a villain from the James Bond films, although for the life of him he couldn't think of one that small. The baby, trembling with frustration, continued to shout instructions unabated. His tiny knuckles whitened around the deck of cards clutched in his little hands.

That's when things got weird.

"Look, he obviously has a different trigger. Welcome to Rhode Island, Congressman Shaw."

For the first time, Raymond became aware of a man seated at the kitchen table. He was mostly obscured by the newspaper he was reading, but it was obvious the man was unusually short in stature... and had a tail. The dog laid the paper down on the table, revealing it to be an issue of _The Quahog Informant_. Raymond was not naturally comfortable in social situations but he had been often told that it was impolite to stare. That said, he was currently under the mistaken impression that the whole ordeal was a terrible bite-induced nightmare and that manners were therefore a secondary issue. "You can talk," he said blankly.

"So can you," the dog noted. "I have to say, I am impressed. Seems that Harvard education did some good after all."

"What's this?" the baby exclaimed. "You know about him? How does he work? Tell me, or by God this will be the last time you meddle in my affairs, dog!"

The dog sighed. He rose to his feet (or rather, paws) and extended a paw as if to shake hands. "My name is Brian Griffin. It is a pleasure to meet you, Congressman."

Raymond gave the paw a distasteful look and, rejected, Brian reluctantly retracted it. He was a Shaw—or a Prentiss, depending on whom you asked—and he wasn't about to shake hands with a dog. Even if it did seem reasonably articulate. "Where am I?" he repeated.

"31 Spooner St., Quahog, Rhode Island," Brian calmly replied. "This is our home."

Raymond looked around. It certainly wasn't his home. There weren't enough servants, for one thing, and Abraham Lincoln didn't dominate the décor. "I shouldn't be here. How do I get h—back to where I was?" He felt foolish asking a dog for directions, but the baby seemed an equally unreliable source of information.

The dog turned his attention to the machine, now a smoking heap in the corner. A bit of cautious experimentation with the switches revealed that the power was still dead. "That might be a bit complicated. Looks like Stewie's little masterpiece downed Quahog's main power grid. They'll probably have it up and running in a few hours, but until then you're stuck here. That is, assuming this thing still works."

"Stewie?" Raymond asked, not really wanting to know.

"Raymond Shaw, meet Stewart Griffin." Brian gestured towards the petulant child, still clutching his package of playing cards. "Look, there's been a mix-up. He didn't want you in the first place. He wanted..." Brian stopped mid-sentence, his formidable brain searching in vain for a satisfactory way to describe what was going on without emotionally scarring the man standing before him any more than he already was. "... Laurence Harvey."

Raymond frowned. "I've never heard of him."

"He is you," Brian said thoughtfully, "only different."

On some level, Raymond was aware that those sorts of statements were on par with "There is no spoon" so far as reality-warping, mind-bending complexity is concerned. Yet, all the man was consciously able to manage was a mildly uncomfortable expression and a few weak protestations. "That doesn't make any sense," he said.

Brian looked at him and shook his head. "You expect a talking dog to make sense?"

Raymond couldn't help but admit that the talking dog raised an excellent point.

"Brian, I'm making sandwiches for lunch. Would you like anything?" Lois's pleasant, if nasal, voice lofted into the kitchen. The woman soon followed, arms overflowing with packages and parcels that were quickly dumped onto the kitchen table. Selecting a couple of cans of pureed corn from the heap, she looked up to discover a large man blocking her path to the cupboard. "Oh my!" she exclaimed, followed by a lesser but still audible "Oh _my_..." that she probably hadn't meant to say aloud.

The charming people-loving Raymond was compelled to smile. He extended his hand automatically and was about to introduce himself when Stewie felt obligated to interject. "Mother," he said sweetly as he selected the Queen of Diamonds from the deck, "I would like you to meet--KILL HER! KILL HER NOW!"

"Raymond Shaw," he said with a laugh. "Your son is adorable. It is a pleasure to meet you, Miss..."

"Lois. Lois Griffin," she said with a flustered giggle. "It's a pleasure to meet you too, Mr. Shaw. Are you a friend of Brian's?"

"Um, yes," Brian said, interrupting what were more than likely going to be Raymond's vehement denials. "We were just going out for a drink. Weren't we, Raymond?"

"But Brian!" Lois protested. "It's barely three thirty! Why don't you and Mr. Shaw stay in for the afternoon? Stewie seems very fond of him, and Meg and Chris will be home from school in a few minutes. I'll make sandwiches..."

"You have... more children?" Raymond said, recovering quickly.

"Oh yes!" she said happily, her face aglow with maternal pride. "Meg is sixteen now and Chris is thirteen. It's an awkward age but Chris takes so after his father, the little gentleman... Hold on, let me find the photo album..."

"Red Queen! Red Queen!" Stewie shouted, jumping up and down in a desperate attempt to get the Queen of Diamonds into Raymond's line of vision. "You must do as I say! I order you to KILL LOIS--"

"Although the idea of staying here and looking through photographs of your no doubt _delightful_ family is, um, tempting," he said with a friendly laugh, "I'm afraid that it is very important Brian and I leave. Now."

"BLAST!" Stewie cried.

The front door slammed closed. "Lois! Have you seen my pants?" came a booming voice from the living room. Lois's attention momentarily averted ("Peter, you were wearing your pants when you went to work! Did you leave them in the car?"), Raymond took the opportunity to slink towards the door. He didn't get far.

"Who're you?" demanded the large wall of lard blocking his escape.

"I currently serve in Congress as the representative from New York and am the Democratic nominee for Vice President of the United States. My name is Raymond Prentiss Shaw. If I have answered all of your questions, please _get out of my way_."

Lois beamed. "Oh, that's Peter, my husband. Peter, this is Raymond. He's a friend of Brian's. Why, I hadn't realized you were in politics, Mr. Shaw! You must be very important to be running for Vice President."

"I am," Raymond replied, more tersely than his programming would have liked.

"It's such an honor to have a Vice Presidential nominee in our house!" she said, her words accompanied by something that sounded suspiciously like a dreamy sigh. "Well, Mr. Vice President, you are welcome in our home anytime!"

"That's convenient," Brian muttered, "given that he's going to be living here from now on."

"What was that?" Lois snapped.

Peter ambled across the room in search of cookies. He continued to be without his pants, but seemed to be under the impression that this was a problem that would resolve itself given enough time and calories.

"Nothing," Brian said quickly before disappearing out the door. Excluding his brief stint in the army and a number of subsequent photo-ops his mother seemed convinced would further his political career, Raymond had little first-hand experience with "the American people". He'd read about them, of course, but he'd always considered this self-imposed detachment to be a good thing. The sight of Peter Griffin without pants did nothing but confirm this to be fact. And to think _Marco_ complained of nightmares... Raymond reluctantly stopped in the doorway, treating the dazzled couple to a smile and a quick wave before practically darting after the dog onto the streets of Quahog.


	3. Chapter Three

3.

"I suppose I ought to thank you," Raymond said, shaking off his borrowed umbrella before stepping inside the comparative warmth and security of The Drunken Clam. The weather had soured quickly; the sound of sardines hitting the sidewalk could still be heard after the door had closed behind them.

Brian surveyed the establishment. It was, as he had hoped, all but empty; Horace, the bartender, was seated behind the bar reading a book. Depositing his umbrella in a bucket beside the door, Brian sidestepped the thrashing fish that had been tracked inside and walked to the bar.

Horace coughed, extinguishing his cigarette into an ashtray as he slipped the book beneath the bar and out of sight. "The usual, Brian?" he asked.

Before the dog had a chance to reply, a martini had materialized in front of him. He accepted it gratefully. "Thanks Horace. You have no idea how much I need this. It's been quite a day."

"What about your friend?" Horace nodded at Raymond, still standing near the doorway. He seemed engrossed in the delicate act of removing a squashed herring from the sole of his shoe, intent on accomplishing the task in a manner that allowed him to retain some shreds of his dignity. It was understandably difficult.

Brian mentally weighed his chances of finding a satisfactory Cabernet Sauvignon at an establishment with a large fluorescent clam flickering above the door. "He'll have a beer."

By the time Raymond had finished with his shoes, a pint of Pawtucket Patriot Beer was waiting for him on the count. He stared pointedly at it on the chance it would go away. "What is that?"

"That," said Brian, finishing his martini, "is beer, a fermented alcoholic beverage made from malted grain. You probably encountered it in college."

"_I know that_," Raymond said tersely. He'd had beer before, of course, perhaps most memorably once or twice during his brief but celebrated stint in the armed forces—occasions he'd spent the past thirteen years pretending had never happened. After all, the glass looked dirty. "You don't expect me drink that, do you?"

Brian laughed before returning to his drink. "Real man of the people, you are."

"Oh, be quiet," Raymond grumbled, reluctantly bringing the stein to his lips. It wasn't as terrible as all that, he supposed.

And they drank, and all was well with the world.


	4. Chapter Four

4.

The hours passed.

Life returned to comparative normalcy in the Griffin household. Peter's pants were located after considerable detective work (in the back yard; no explanation provided), and the children returned home as expected. Meg complained about being unpopular; Chris about the unusual taste of glue. It was business as usual until around six o'clock when the lights abruptly came back on.

"Finally!" Meg groaned, bounding down the stairs from her room and into the living room. "Now I can _finally _watch TV."

"What do you mean we can finally watch TV?" Chris asked, horrified. He'd been watching television for the past two hours. Admittedly, not much had happened and all the shows were starting to look alike, but he'd credited that to an unprecedented decline in the production quality of most modern sitcoms.

Meg flopped on the counch and, after a few minutes of fumbling for the remote control in the uncharted depths of the couch, smiled as the television turned on and the handsome face of news anchor Tom Tucker came into focus. Chris stared in awe. "But _he's_ not in _According To Jim!_," he protested. "I've heard of celebrity casting, but this is ridiculous!"

Meg rolled her eyes.

Her gargantuan brother eased himself off of the couch. "I'm going to get a drink," he explained helpfully, apparently under the impression she cared, and ambled into the kitchen. What he discovered there banished delectable Mountain Dew from his mind for the rest of the afternoon. It was staring at him, and it had a knife.

"EVIL MONKEY!" he screamed.

The evil monkey that, for whatever reason, was an unwelcome resident in Chris's closet had been his arch-nemesis for some time, but it appeared that lumbering Chris had for once caught the monkey off his guard. Startled, the monkey brandished his weapon and, with a primal growl, leaped towards the helpless boy with every intention of ending their rivalry once and for all.

The boy screamed again. His massive arms flailing in panic, Chris hit the monkey soundly in the chest and sent the whimpering animal flying into the corner of the room. Predictably, he landed with a crash atop Stewie's machine and it soon began to sputter, belching out plimes of foul-smelling black smoke and erratic showers of sparks.

The monkey, sensing the balance of power had shifted, allowed the knife to clatter to the floor and fled up the stairs. He slipped into the comparative safety of Chris's closet and, expertly navigating the heaps of dirty clothing and softcore pornography, entered his secret base of operations. He stepped into a tastefully decorated room that made considerable use of a minimalist's approach to interior decoration and a dazzling array of high-tech surveillance equipment. A wall of television screens displayed rotating images of every room in the house--Meg watching television, Lois teaching piano--until every screen came to display the same innocent, unexpecting face: Chris Griffin. The monkey, sliding back into his oversized armchair, started to laugh.

The presence of a monkey streaking up the stairs was more than enough to get Stewie's attention, but it was the shrieking from Meg that the television was on the fritz again that convinced him he had a problem. Scrambling into the kitchen as quickly as he could, he collapsed to his hands and knees in disbelief. "No!" he cried as his machine began to groan. "It hasn't been properly calibrated!"

Chris lay unconscious on the kitchen floor. He'd fainted.

Stewie ducked under a table. He was aware that most of his inventioned had the potential to flatten Quahog and permanently disfigure most of the eastern seaboard, depending on how far the radiation carried. But was it honestly his fault that reality jumping required that much uranium?

The machine coughed, and there was light.


	5. Chapter Five

5.

Major Bennett Marco was tired.

Exhausted, more like it. This was to be expected of a man who, after thirteen years of continuous nightmares, had come to consider sleep the enemy. His head ached. His hands trembled despite themselves. He'd had the hallucinations before, of course. When experiencing physical or mental fatigue (which, to be fair, was pretty much all the time), Ben often experienced what his psychiatrists generally described as intense, paranoid delusions. Part of him wondered if it was the additional stress of his impending incarceration that accounted for the small child sprawled on the stained linoleum. He had these doubts.

The baby was pointing at him, his expression accusative. "Aha!" the child loudly exclaimed. "You, now you most certainly _not_ Frank Sinatra!"

Thankfully, disorientation was something with which Ben had considerable first-hand experience. Even allowing for his seemingly spontaneous appearance in someone's kitchen, there was something odd about the child seated before him. Something other than the shape of his head, anyway. "There's _no way_ you're old enough to talk," he said firmly, long-forgotten memories of his sister's infant daughter stirring in the recesses of his battered mind. "Sure, you might know a couple of words _maybe_, but believe me when I say 'Frank Sinatra' doesn't rank up there with 'cookie' and 'daddy'. Who are you working for?"

"Who are _you_ to tell _me_ what I can or cannot do?! Mindless cretin!" the baby sneered before raising his voice to sound the alarm. "Mother! Oh, mother! There is a strange black man in our house!"

Cleveland nodded sagely. "Can I borrow some ketchup?" he asked in his familiar drawl. "We're eating fish sticks, and fish sticks are never the same without ketchup."

Ben stared. Where did _he _come from?

His thoughts were further interrupted by the sound of a door opening with a crash in the other room. Some shattered glass and a few mild oaths later, the new arrival began to... well, the most charitable word would probably be 'hum', but there was nothing light and cheerful about the cacophonous strains of 'Hail To The Chief' that had launched a vicious and unprovoked attack on his eardrums. He winced.

Peter Griffin strode into the kitchen with as much pomp and circumstance as could be expected of a man providing his own theme music. For all his faults, Stewie was a clever boy. Anticipating trouble, he scrambled beneath the table in the hopes that his father would be suitably deterred by the idea of his having to bend over. Alas, the baby was soon ferreted out, thrashing and kicking all the while, and forcibly kissed on the forehead.

Cleveland stared. "Whatcha doin', Peter?"

This was not well-received. So far as spontaneous shows of affection were concerned, Stewie's patience was wearing understandably thin. Keen on revenge, he bit his father's hand with bestial ferocity. The big man swore, allowing his son to drop to the floor and make good his escape. "Ow! Stupid kids. Well, Cleveland, I've decided to be the next President of the United States!"

"But Peter," Cleveland said, "I thought you said you were going to become a fighter pilot."

_Peter is sitting in a noisy arcade in front of a video game consul. The words _SUPER ULTRA FLYER PLUS: RAINBOW EDITION! _are stenciled on the side. Further inspection reveals the game to be a primitive flight simulator that makes considerable use of cartoon unicorns and perky theme music. Peter plays gleefully until a little boy, no more than eight years of age, taps him gently on the arm and suggests he'd like to play. Without taking his eyes off the game, Peter punches him in the face._

"Yeah," Peter said awkwardly. "That didn't pan out, but I figure President'll be less dangerous, anyway. My fist still smarts something fierce."

"Somehow, I doubt that," Ben said dryly.

Peter turned, apparently noticing the intruder for the first time. He grasped the man by the hand as he imagined politicians ought to do and gave it a hard shake. "What's your name, son?" he said, his smile nauseating.

"Major Ben Marco," he said, rubbing some feeling into his hand. "What am I doing here?"

"Excellent question," said a crisp English voice from the doorway. It seemed that Stewie had returned, and he had brought—friends. The ray gun gleamed in his little hands. His muscle, Rupert, blocked the exit. There would be no escape. "The machine was accidentally activated in my absence," he explained. "I am sorry, Major Marco, but if I were to allow you to live, I would risk losing my tenuous hold on Raymond altogether. You must die!"

Ben stared at him.

Once again displaying her keen sense of timing, Lois arrived in time to avert catastrophe. Sweeping Stewie up into her arms, she deftly disarmed the little boy and set the weapon on a shelf out of his reach. She ignored his cries and protestations. "It isn't polite to point your toys at visitors, Stewie," she scolded. "You can have it back later. You want a cookie? Sure you do, sweetie!" She stuffed a chocolate chip cookie into his mouth and he paid Ben no further attention.

"Wait, do you mean Raymond Shaw? Congressman Raymond Shaw?" For some reason, this particular revelation wasn't as surprising as it probably should have been. His eyes narrowed.

"Oh!" Lois said, chuckling pleasantly. "You must be a friend of Raymond's! Such a nice young man. Isn't he, Stewie?"

Stewie rolled his eyes theatrically and allowed himself the pleasure of an exaggerated sigh. "Oh yes, so nice. Such a _nice _man. Let's see how nice you think him when preparing to disembowel you with a letter opener."

Ben ignored this. "Where is Shaw now? It's uh, important that I talk with him. As soon as possible, if possible."

"Oh," Peter brayed, "he's off getting plastered with Brian."

Now that was a surprise. "You mean he's drinking?" Ben would be the first to admit that he found the idea of Saint Raymond inebriated amusing. Perhaps it was the idea of his drinking with someone else that was giving him trouble and that, of course, was the ten million dollar question..."Who's Brian?"

"The dog."

Now that was strangely comforting. It was going to be a long, long day.


End file.
